Billionaires bounce back

NEW YORK_  Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling and the founders of the Google search engine have landed on Forbes magazine's annual list of billionaires after a year when rallying stocks and a strong euro swelled the list to the longest it's ever been.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates remains perched atop the list for the 10th straight year, but investor Warren Buffett is nipping at his heels. Gates' net worth is now estimated at $46.6 billion, still less than half the $100 billion it peaked at in 1998, but up about 13 percent from the $40.7 billion Forbes attributed to him in 2003.

Buffett wins the bragging rights for reaping the year's best gains. He increased his net worth by $12.4 billion to $42.9 billion, narrowing the gap between him and Gates, with whom he competes in bridge tournaments.

German supermarket magnate Karl Albrecht remained in third place, with a fortune of $23 billion. Close behind were Saudi Arabia's Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud, whose $21.5 nest egg put him just ahead of Microsoft's other co-founder, Paul Allen, who came in fifth with $21 billion.

Rounding out the top 10 were Helen Walton, wife of the late Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, and four members of her family. They were tied for sixth, with each worth an estimated $20 billion.

All told, it was a fabulous year to be very rich. The magazine counted 587 billionaires around the world, up from 476 in 2003. Their total net worth jumped to $1.9 trillion from $1.4 trillion in 2003.

"After two years of significantly falling fortunes, we really saw an uptick for just about everybody on the list," said Luisa Kroll, an associate editor who oversaw the project.

The strength of the euro currency in comparison to the dollar helped launch 22 new billionaires onto the list, for a total of 164 Europeans. Their net worth as a group surged 47 percent to $578 billion.

Rising oil prices helped Russia add eight billionaires, for a total of 25. That puts the country in third place, behind the United States and Germany.

In the United States, billionaires gained not only from a 20 percent rise in stocks, but also from reductions in taxes on dividends and capital gains, according to Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com.

The list includes 53 women and 24 single people. The average billionaire's age is 64, and 27 are under 40.

Only six people dropped off the list, compared with 67 who fell off in 2003 and 83 drop-offs in 2002, according to Kroll.

There were 56 billionaires who returned to the list after dropping off in the previous few years, including Yahoo founders David Filo ($2.2 billion) and Jerry Yang ($1.9 billion). They returned to find their upstart search-engine rivals, Google's Sergey Brin and Larry Page ($1 billion each) on the list.

Other newcomers included the Canadian creator of Cirque du Soleil, Guy Laliberte ($1.1 billion), and Hong Kong's Michael Ying ($1.8 billion), chairman and CEO of clothing company Esprit Holdings Ltd.

Given earlier comments in other threads about how the only way to get rich is to inherit, isn't there a bit of irony in this list?

Bill Gates started out as a Hipppie Nerd; Rowling came out of nowhere but had an idea for a story. Buffet started with little more than smarts and ambition.

While I wouldn't go back and change anything about my own life, vis-a-vis money-hustle, I've often wondered where I'd have gotten if I'd not wanted my independence from "the system" as much as I have. Huntin' and fishin' and racin' "them old sports cars" and listenin' to good music--those were more important to me than hustling money.

Money is like engergy. It moves from one place to another. If you have it it came from someone. For someone to be a millionaire other people had to give money up some how. In many cases by selling their labor cheaply to survive or over paying for goods.

Think of the Pharmaceutical companies. Even with the cost of research on drugs that never to make it to market they are still making money hand over fist and and becoming rich on the illnesses of other people. Some basic drugs cost $5 or more a day. And we aren't talking about a drug you have to take for week and that is it. We are talking about maintance medications that often are taken for years on end or even for life. If you don't have prescription insurance you are screwed.

And since when do people actually get paid for the value of the work they do. Some of our most important workers are sanitation workers. What are they paid?

"Money is like engergy. It moves from one place to another. If you have it it came from someone. For someone to be a millionaire other people had to give money up some how."

Two problems with this idea: First, it ignores the fact that wealth can be created from nothing more than an idea: "Harry Potter" is a good example.

Second, it doesn't at all explain how the GDP of the world increased to its present (approximately) $32 trillion. I don't believe it can be explained by inflation and the loss of value of money (although obviously there has been some, over time). The expansion of wealth did not occur from printing money.

Wealth, overall, comes from production. Production comes from somebody's idea of a new mousetrap of some sort. Once the mousetrap is "out there", others go into production...

A farmer buys seed; he adds labor and produces a crop. That's an increase in total wealth. Same for any other sort of business.

The fact that some cheat and all that sort of Bad Thing has little to do with the creation of wealth, whether for an individual or for a nation or for the world.

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